Seriously, it’s probably more than a hundred people deep. What’s more, the people in this line, most in their early-to-mid twenties, are simply here to see a couple of L.A. dudes play songs off their laptops.

“It’s so cool. It’s like a movement, I swear,” says Ashley Doty, who is working the merch table. She shows me her Fall Out Boy tattoo.

“I don’t know if you know this, but nostalgia is really in right now,” Doty adds.

I do my best to maintain my nearly-40 composure as a barely-20-something tells me that “nostalgia is really in.” The irony of blink-182’s “What’s My Age Again?” playing in the background is not lost on me.

Welcome to Emo Nite San Diego, one of the many local club nights devoted to playing the somewhat obscure subgenre of indie-rock. All around me, young people are mulling about.

He’s right. Within an hour, The Casbah dancefloor and even the stage are flooded with people jumping, dancing and singing along to every single lyric of songs such as My Chemical Romance’s “Helena” and Panic! at the Disco’s “I Write Sins Not Tragedies.” I witnessed a similar scene a few months before when I attended The Office’s monthly residency for Death Cab for Karaoke, a band that specializes in playing live renditions of popular emo songs for attendees to sing.

“All of the shows have been really insane,” says James Forbes, one of the members of Death Cab for Karaoke, who have been performing since May and will be at the Office again on Feb. 20. “There are bands doing this all over the country… We’re always adding new songs.”

Just as with any genre of music, the parameters of what makes a band “emo” are debatable. The broadest definition includes a lot of popular ’90s and ’00s bands, or what Forbes calls “emo-adjacent” bands like The Killers, blink-182 and Paramore. Purists would argue for more indie, underground bands such as The Promise Ring and Christie Front Drive. Sometimes there’s a more punk and glam-rock sound and sometimes it’s acoustic based, but an element that most seem to agree on is that the lyrics have to be heartfelt and filled with themes of longing, love and forlornness. Earnestness and emotionality are a must. The genre’s influence can be seen in a crop of current musical artists, from big-name acts like Lana Del Rey and Drake, to newcomers such as Billie Eilish and Robert DeLong. Emo-rap is also a thing.

And Emo Nite San Diego and Death Cab for Karaoke are not anomalies. There’s the touring Emo Night Brooklyn (at House of Blues on Feb. 15), as well as Everything Is Alright, a more straightforward monthly karaoke night at Whisky Girl in the Gaslamp (the next one is on Feb. 11).

From my experiences at Emo Nite and Death Cab for Karaoke, I get the sense that people who attend one of these events aren’t so much reveling in the music they loved when they were young, but the fact that they’re finally getting to meet all the “weird” kids they never met in high school. More importantly, they’re getting to dance around to the music they listened to in their childhood homes, but likely never heard at, say, their high school proms.

“Emo music is not all about sadness… I feel like the lyrics are about things that everyone can relate to. Especially in your teenage years,” says Cruz. “I just think everything comes back full circle. The subject matter of the songs, it’s just something that we can relate to forever.”